The first day of the clinic was awesome!

We breakfasted and then drove to the church in Kibera.  It was an easy drive, since it was a national holiday commemorating Kenya’s independence from Britain in 1962.  It was a little eerie for us old-timers, seeing hardly anyone on the streets in the slum when it is usually teeming with people and vehicles making their way out to work.  We expect a much different scenario tomorrow.  We arrived at the church before 8am and began setting up the clinic.  We were surprised that the sanctuary and all of the pews had been rearranged to closely resemble our last clinic, a nice surprise gift from our volunteers to us.  After we had things pretty well setup, I did a short devotion on the Great Commission and then we had a song together before a prayer was said to bless the coming first day of the vision mission.

We were fairly busy from the start, as we started the clinic with four Kenyan doctors, two of whom were already friends from before.  As with any new startup, we had some growing pains and had to concentrate on routing the patients to the proper stations to get care, but we had it running very well by the end of the morning.  Many on our team worked in more than one area, and as we get cross-trained a little bit more, we will all be able to jump into an area of the clinic where a bottleneck is occurring and make quick work of it.  By the time the day had ended, we had seen 433 patients, possibly a new record for the first day for any clinic I have been involved with.  Thank you, Jesus!  We ended the day with a song from our Kenyan friends, then I reviewed the day and thanked everybody for a great start.  William ended the devotion with an acoustic guitar he borrowed at the church, leading us in singing Lord I Lift Your Name on High.  The harmony between and our volunteers was awesome!  What a great start to the week.

We got back to our lodgings around 5:30, had time to shower and relax a bit before dinner together at Rosa Mystica.  We discussed the highlights of the day from everybody’s perspective over dinner and what to expect for the rest of the week.  If it follows the usual pattern, our numbers will grow with each passing day.  Time to hit the sack and get some rest for what promises to be a very big week.  Blessings everybody!